Case Studies for IBM, Phillips Electronics, EMC, and BT Group

 

CLIENT - PHILIPS ELECTRONICS (National Project)

Philips Electronics (Koninkljike Philips Electronics) is one of the world's largest electronics companies - and Europe's biggest. Operating in more than 60 countries, Philips is a global leader in Consumer Electronics, Business Electronics, Lighting, Personal Care products, Discrete Semiconductors, and Medical Systems.

THE CHALLENGE

Philips needed to focus on two fronts: to increase the awareness of its brand and to "top grade" the people they were bringing into the company to mirror the growth of the brand image.

BUSINESS NEEDS

The first issue that Philips addressed was to conduct a staff evaluation and identify their best contributors. To accomplish this they hired the Gallup Organization, which assisted in the improvement of the company's future hiring practice. As with other areas of quality improvement, a review of the initial costs vs. the cost of mis-hires was weighed heavily. It was determined that a better hire would result in a better and quicker ROI and fewer lost opportunities.

The second issue was to locate a search firm that could support this kind of national effort - one that had the commitment as well as resources and at the same time could partner successfully with a third party evaluation process. The long-term goal was to create a level of consistency in the search process that would work nationally and would serve as a model globally.

SOLUTION

The first thing we established was a process to collaborate with Gallup in a seamless fashion. Each search was begun with a careful analysis of the objectives of the new hire, as well as that of the division, to insure that the individual would complement the goals. It was also incumbent upon us to interview any internal candidates to evaluate the likelihood of an internal candidate qualified to assume the position. Each search was headed up by a senior member (20+ years experience, as is our practice) and included a dedicated team determined by the core competencies of the members. The goal was to have this team execute a quicker more thorough search, with complete profiles, interview questions, and references done before the interview took place.

The results, as documented by the Gallup Organization, was an increase in the talent level of the people brought into Philips by the Landstone Group. This increase exceeded even Philips' top 15% talent level of contributors. Over the past 5 years we have introduced and secured over 9 Vice Presidents and 75 impact players.

Testimonial

"Through a thorough process, we selected The Landstone Group of New York because of the strong level of conceptual agreement and willingness to invest and apply resources to the relationship. They have been, and remain, full participants! The Landstone Group has become a true 'extension' of Philips. They know our business, our methods, and our processes. Thanks to The Landstone Group for going 'outside the box', thinking synergistically, and partnering for greatness."

CLIENT - IBM

IBM has become one of the greatest turnaround business stories of the 1990's based upon its proven transition out of old technologies and into new, emerging business markets. Wall Street responded appropriately during this period by recognizing it as one of the best performers.

THE CHALLENGE

To bring top multimedia talent to IBM Corporation. To attract very spirited, creative people to an organization recovering from conservative decision-making as well as over-wrought policies and procedures.

BUSINESS NEEDS

IBM decided to enter the Multimedia software arena. They had the knowledge and information to pursue it for the following reasons:

  • A strong K-12 education market knowledge base
  • A "Corporate Library" of reference materials and technological capabilities
  • A solid market analysis indicating they could make a major impact on the Gaming/entertainment marketplace
  • A review of past successes demonstrating true capability to compete with the young, driven, entrepreneurial companies that were becoming well established in the industry

SOLUTION

For over two decades, we have positioned ourselves as a company that can take technology companies into the consumer marketplace and assist them in securing the talent they need.

We mapped out a strategy with IBM. First, we clarified the specific talent profiles we needed to pursue, and from where the talent might come; then we developed a game plan that would attract "fast, aggressive, entrepreneurial individuals" to the "established, structured" environment of IBM.

Over a very short period of time, we met all of the deliverables we had promised, and introduced approximately 8-10 of their key players:

VP Production, VP Sales, and VP Marketing for World Book Encyclopedia (which is now dominant, and a leader in the on-line encyclopedia/education field).

Testimonial

"The Landstone Group has helped IBM increase our market share. It was through their very professional efforts that IBM's consumer software group was able to secure a number of top quality management candidates. In keeping with The Landstone Group of Manhattan's fine reputation in working with high tech companies, they provided us with excellent management personnel in the marketing, sales and production arenas."

CLIENT - EMC (National Project)

EMC Corporation is the world leader in delivering intelligent enterprise storage and retrieval solutions that enable companies and organizations to leverage their growing volumes of information into profitability, growth, and competitive advantage. EMC leapfrogged all of its competition throughout the 1990's and, during this period, was the only NYSE listed company to be an S&P 500 top ten performing stock for the three, five, and ten year period. It also achieved the highest single-decade performance of any listed stock in the history of the NYSE.

THE CHALLENGE

EMC was going through unprecedented growth and needed to expand its executive sales force in order to continue to capture market share and dominate the industry. This required the addition of senior sales executives in a very short period of time to address this critical growth period.

BUSINESS NEEDS

The challenge of finding top talent in a short period of time created a number of obstacles that needed to be addressed. First, how do you find the talent and secure it in such a tight time window? Second, locating one search firm that could centralize the process and support this kind of national effort - as opposed to a decentralized process of selecting regional search firms - was daunting. The level of consistency in the search process would be compromised with a greater number of recruiting firms controlling the process. In addition, training more than one search firm on EMC's mission would lengthen the process and could result in more than one perception of EMC's vision. Finally, would the message to those potential high quality candidates get lost and the appeal factors to those candidates diminish because of a lack of coordinated effort?

SOLUTION

The first thing we needed to establish was a centralized process. Acting on behalf of EMC as the Managing Director, we identified the best and most successful affiliates located strategically throughout the country. We brought together a search force capable of delivering a nationwide project securing and staffing both senior sales executives and senior consultants. As the Managing Director of the process it was our responsibility to coordinate all communication, training (including evangelizing the mission), activities, and weekly status reports. This enabled EMC to rely on our expertise in the area of talent acquisition while they focused on growing their market dominance in the enterprise storage area. The result was "taking a concept and driving it to reality" with the hiring in 90 days of 35 people and over 80 in total.

Testimonial

"The Landstone Group's support enabled EMC to maintain and grow our market dominance in the area of enterprise storage. Given our growth rate, it was vital to our business strategy that we identify a staffing partner that would assist us in rapidly getting to market by hiring numerous professionals during the fourth quarter. A special thanks to The Landstone Group for taking a concept and driving it to reality."

CLIENT - BT Group (National Project)

BT Group wears the crown as the U.K.’s leading telecommunications carrier and with $35 Billion in revenues, the BT empire stretches throughout Europe and across the pond to North America. With key acquisitions such as financial services extranet provider Radianz as well as Infonet, a leading provider in corporate voice and data managed network services, BT’s offerings and infrastructure reach well over 70 countries around the world.

THE CHALLENGE

Attempting twice to enter the U.S. market in the late 90’s through joint ventures with MCI and AT&T (both ventures known as Concert), BT chose to target the U.S. market themselves. They wisely chose a strategy to attack the market from a global perspective. Acknowledging they were among the few providers who could deliver global solutions, they prepared to target international companies who had a strong base of operations in the U.S.

BUSINESS NEEDS

After successfully reducing their debt from $70 Billion to under $10 Billion in just 5 years and becoming one of the few major Telecoms left standing after a harsh economy caused by either bankruptcy or massive downsizing to most of its competition, BT had two challenges to face in order to properly enter the U.S. market.

First, with Long Distance and Local Toll service becoming severe price-cut commodities, the new emerging market for the traditional Telco industry had become Managed Network Services. For BT this meant restructuring the company so that it could more aggressively compete with the major Professional Services firm.

The second challenge was to locate a search firm who could “Top Grade” BT’s U.S. operations with talent that not only could provide experience and expertise in the “Mega Deal” arena of the Outsourcing world, but could also help diversify the face of BT, stripping away the foreign isolated U.K. image and creating a more Global one.

SOLUTION

We mapped out a strategy to attract “Top Talent” from two specific areas:

  1. The major American telecoms with the technical savvy to build up BT’s voice and data infrastructure within North America.
  2. The global Managed Service and Systems Integrators with the experience in “Mega Deal” outsourcing solutions to provide the appropriate direction for BT’s Business Development and Sales teams.

This enabled BT to achieve its goal of putting an American face on their U.S. business as well as to restructure the company to more aggressively compete as a true Managed Service and Outsourcing firm.

With a network of 1,100+ offices in over 40 countries, our organization possesses the knowledge that enabled the creation of a unified approach with BT’s North American headquarters consistent with their global vision and direction.

The end result, within a 2 year period, was the placement of over 30 key individuals within Sales, Operations, Finance, and Service. These included a VP of Operations, a Head of Design and Delivery, and a Global Client Director among others.

Additionally, the depth of our partnership positioned us to anticipate future talent needs resulting in placement of 50% of the North American Service Design team.

Testimonial

Candidate’s Perspective:

“I had the opportunity to work with another recruiter and firm before working with The Landstone Group. The primary variances that immediately come to mind include meaningful, timely, and effective.

Meaningful: The interviews with the Landstone Group were insightful, direct, and content filled discussions - not shallow, surface level interviews. Candidly the interview interaction was more in depth than the hiring firm’s process. Without a doubt, The Landstone Group only passes on to the employer the most ideal and viable candidates.
Timely: During any given gap The Landstone Group did an impressive job of keeping me informed of the status or simply touched base with me to ensure that they didn’t lose a key candidate. I felt engaged and informed every step of the way.

Effective: This is self-evident. The Landstone Group’s support as an extraordinarily effective liaison between hiring company and the candidate made the negotiation a win-win process, resulting in an offer and acceptance.

I want to be clear in stating that the firm I compared The Landstone Group’s process to is by no means second rate. They are very well respected in their industry and my experience with them was not bad. It simply was not as effective and engaging as was every step of the process with The Landstone Group, which possesses excellent insight, candor, and clear direction. As I already have, I will continue to reference The Landstone Group to my peers and colleagues.”

Some Comments from BT:

“Just wanted to tell you how well the new hire is fitting in to the organization.
He is doing a first class job . . . . . . and thanks for suggesting I reconsider interviewing him!”

“My thoughts after interviewing the first candidate presented: 1 for 1… It’s good to know The Landstone Group truly understands our needs.”
“You guys are spot on!”